Friday, November 16, 1973. Transforming Alaska.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 16: 1973     President Richard M. Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.

The building of the Alaska pipeline was huge news at the time. There were those then who expressed concerns about the environmental costs, but by and large, in the midst of the oil crisis, it was looked at by Americans with a lot of hope and often compared to big prior endeavors, such as the Transcontinental Railroad.

The oil would forever change the economy of Alaska, as it also had already, and was continuing to do, in Wyoming.

Before the Oil. And after it? The economies of Wyoming and Alaska.

Skylab 4 was launched.

Monday, May 14, 1973. Skylab launched, but damaged.

Skylab was launched.  The US's first space station was damaged due to a signals error, and the launching of the crew therefore had to be delayed.

This is, I'll admit, one of those areas of history I should be interested in, but I'm not.  I'm not sure why, but post Apollo space exploration just does't interest me very much.

The US opened its first diplomatic mission to the People's Republic of China.

Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty in Northern Ireland.

Tuesday, December 19, 1972. Apollo 17 splashes down.

 

Apollo 17 splashed down, bringing to an end the Apollo missions.

Thursday, December 7, 1972. The last to be drafted, Apollo 17.

Apollo 17 was launched.

It was the last of the Apollo missions and accordingly the last manned mission to the Moon.

This seems like something I should recall, but I don't.  I would have been in 4th Grade at the time, and moon missions were a big deal, but as noted, this was the last one and the 17th Apollo Mission. Fifty years later, I can't recall having paid too much attention to this one, although it seems to me I dimly recall it.

On the same day, the last conscription induction call in U.S. history occurred.  The call was to have been one of two to occur in 1972, but the second one was suspended due to a national day of mourning called by President Nixon in honor of Harry S. Truman, who died on December 26, 1972.  The conscription call would have occurred on December 28. 

The men who were chosen in the draft lottery on this day did not, I believe, immediately but in 1973. This was, after all, in December.  Having said that, I'm not completely certain.  49,514 men were inducted into the service via conscription in 1972.  646 were inducted in 1973, with the final induction occurring on June 30, 1973,  The height of the Vietnam War era induction occurred in 1966, when 382,010 men were inducted.

On January 27, 1973, President Nixon suspended conscription. In part this recognized the impending end of the Vietnam War, but the move was also clearly political and designed to address increasing civil unrest in spite of the obvious coming end of the war.  Conscription had been resumed in 1948 and the Cold War was far from over, but moral in the U.S. military was disintegrating to the crisis level, which provided another, albeit unstated, reason for suspending the draft.  The Army started rebuilding itself as an all volunteer force in 1973, but it would really take until the Reagan Administration for a new, effective Army to form.

Congressional authority to induct expired on June 30, 1973, although oddly lottery drawing continued until March 12, 1975.  Registration for conscription terminated on April 1, 1975, which I can recall occurring.  Registration would resume, however, a mere five years later, in 1980, and it remains a legal obligation for men.

Men drafted on this day would have found themselves in the odd situation of having to serve in the U.S. Army until late 1974, according to The New York Times, which ran a headline on November 23, 1974, that the last conscripts had been discharged.  If that is correct, they must have been let go slightly ahead of schedule, which likely would have reflected the end of the Vietnam War and a drawdown that sought to eliminate men who didn't want to be there.  Otherwise, the June 30, 1973, inductee should have served until June 1975.  The last pool applied only to men born in 1952 or later, so it applied only to men in their early 20s, for practical purposes.

The end of the draft really returned the U.S. military to its historical norm. The Army had not conscripted at all until the Civil War, and then did not do it again until World War One.  Militia service, of course, was mandatory in the US up until around the Civil War, when it started to slowly die off as a observed state requirement.  The World War One and World War Two drafts had been enormous, with the US drafting 2,294,084 in 1918 alone, and 3,323,970 in 1943.  Following 1940, there'd only been one year, 1947, in which there had been no inductions, up until 1974.

The last man inducted was Dwight Elliot Stone.  He was a married plumbers apprentice living in Sacramento who was 24 years old at the time and had two kids.  He tried to avoid to hide induction before finally turning himself in.  He served in the Army for 17 months (which would make the NYT article at least a bit inaccurate) before being discharged early for reasons he wasn't aware of, but which were probably due to the fact that by 1975 the Army didn't really want unwilling soldiers around.

Stone went to basic training at Ft. Polk, at which the press followed him around a bit.  He was trained as an electronic technician, after which he was stationed at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey.  Upon his discharged he was quoted as saying "I wouldn't have joined.  It wasn't the place to be. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone. I didn't like it. It was poorly run.''

In the early 70s, it was in fact poorly run.

Stone went back to work as a plumber/pipe fitter in Sacramento, but over time his view changed, as it did for many who had been conscripted in the same period.  He later stated that while he didn't like being in the Army, he'd had a lot of fun while in it, and he used his service benefits to attend two years of college.  His oldest son enlisted in the Marine Corps.

“Instructors Console for Mission Simulator,” by Marbury Brown, 5/18/1972.

 

“Instructors Console for Mission Simulator,” by Marbury Brown, 5/18/1972. 

February 9, 1971. Satchel Page inducted, Apollo 14 returns, San Fernando hit by earthquake.

Satchel Page was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first black player to receive that honor.

The Apollo 14 mission returned to Earth.

An earthquake killed 58 people in San Fernando, California.  It measured 6.5 of the Richter Sale.

Apollo 12 Returns to Earth. November 24, 1969

Apollo 12 and the USS Hornet.

On this day in 1969, the Apollo 12 crew rode their module back down to Earth.

The recovery was affected by the USS Hornet, the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier that famously was used in World War Two.  The Hornet had been commissioned in 1943, decommissioned in 1947, and then recommissioned with a new angled flight deck 1953. At the time of her recommissioning she was a small aircraft carrier and she was decommissioned again in 1970, just the following year after this mission.  She was struck from the roles in 1989 and is now a museum ship in Alameda, California.

The Apollo 12 mission was a successful one, particularly in light of its frightening start when the Saturn rockets were struck twice by lightening during the launch.  Seismographers were left on the moon when the lunar capsule was launched back to the orbiting module and the launching apparatus' vibrations on the surface of the moon lasted for over an hour.

November 19, 1969. Apollo 12 Lands on the Moon.

November 14, 1969. Apollo 12 launched.

It was, of course, a mission to the moon.

Lightening struck the Saturn rocket twice as it was lifting off, taking all three fuel cells offline.  Irrespective of that, it flew normally.

July 24, 1969. Apollo 11 voyagers return to earth.

July 20, 1969. The first moon landing.

Buzz Aldrin on the moon, Neil Armstrong visible in the reflection on his helmet shield.

On this day in 1969 human beings landed on the moon for the first time.

I've just posted another item on the 1960s that has a much less celebratory tone to it. This achievement, and it was indeed that, really stands out as the best of the 1960s.

The 1960s, by which we really mean the 1960s after 1964 and extending to about 1973, were a traumatic era full of turmoil around the world.  The years 1968 and 1969 were particularly that way.  So this 1969 event stood out, even at the time, as an example of what human beings could achieve if they wanted to.

It still stands for that.

I'm old enough to have a personal recollection of this event.  I was six years old at the time.  My recollection has come to be that mother turned the television on at home, something that was almost never done during the day prior to my father coming home from work, save for her daily viewing of Days Of Our Lives, so that we could watch it on our black and white Zenith television.

But that recollection is off.  The first moon landing occurred at 10:56 p.m, which would have been very late at night where I lived.  We must have watched it on the television that next morning.

And so we did.

It was amazing even then. And as a small kid at that time, we all were fascinated by the moon landing. But then so were adults.  It was a big deal, and we knew it was.  Some of us had astronaut toys at the time.  For awhile, I had a pennant that a friend of my mothers brought back as a gift from the Houston NASA facility.  It was an achievement that stood apart.

Indeed, it still does as a first. There's been nothing like it since.  It was frequently compared, at that time, to Columbus making contact with the New World, something that didn't draw people into debates about colonialism or the like at the time.  It was an enormous achievement and it had the feel of an enormous achievement for mankind.

Which it was.

Of course, it was one that we'd been headed towards for some time, which is worth remembering.  Endeavors just don't happen, they have to be worked on.  That rocket technology might take us to the Moon, and beyond, was obvious as soon as they became something serious in the early Twentieth Century.  Rocket technology really received a boost, however, due to World War Two, as explored in this blog entry here:

The Moon Landings—The World War II Connection

And after the war, the weapons capacity of rocketry kept development going, as is well known.

But none of that had to lead to space exploration.  Mankind simply decided that it would.

And it perhaps there's a lesson for us here.  This took place in the Cold War, with the Cold War constantly in the background. That a greater goal would be developed in that background surely means the big problems of today, especially that present scientific and technological challenges, can be handled now.

Apollo 8 - Book Of Genesis Reading (December 24, 1968)

Apollo 8: Live from the Moon - December 24, 1968

Apollo 7 launched, Coup in Panama. October 11, 1968

Florida as viewed from Apollo 7.

1.  It was the first of the Apollo missions to be manned.

2.  Panama underwent a military coup.  It would remain controlled by its military for quite some time thereafter.  The democratically elected Arnulfo Arias had been in office twice before, in the 40s and 50s, but was in office for only eleven days on this occasion.